February 3, 1911
I have been back at work, investigating stories for the New York World under the name Vee Swann since early December. But I’d outed myself to my friends. I couldn’t pretend with them anymore. There had been enough lies. I didn’t want any more in my life. At first, Fanny and Martha were furious with me for the deception, and I thought I’d lose their friendship forever. But the more we talked it out, the more they came to understand why I’d felt I had to create an alternative persona, and they had forgiven me.
I’ve also retired Silk, Satin and Scandals. I will have to steer my sister and my mother to their charitable events without the column’s push. After all that had happened, it seemed silly to continue with it.
I still think about Jacob. Often, if I am honest. But that story is better left alone. I now avoid walking past Mr. Cartier’s shop during closing times. I certainly don’t want to run into Jacob on the street and endure an impersonal greeting from him.
My mother and I have never spoken again of her confession, but our relationship has changed because of it. Of course, I’ve kept what she did to myself. She’s not a danger to society. She was a grief-ravaged wife and sister. She is a mother determined to safeguard her children. We’ve reached a truce. She trusts me, and in her trust I’ve found compassion for her. And yes, love. Tempered, but much more real because of its honesty. Without the pretense, she has become someone I can understand. A woman who once wanted desperately to be an artist but didn’t know how to break out of society’s pressures. Who fell passionately in love with a man who married her with the best of intentions but ultimately failed her in a profound way, through no fault of his own. A woman who, despite all that, scripted her own story and endured. She accepted who my father was yet never stopped loving him. She alone gave my father the safe place he needed so that he could navigate the treacherous but fulfilling path he chose. She provided him with the family he so badly wanted. Allowed him his passion, and in return, she survived her loneliness.
And I understand that. I, too, suffer from loneliness, as I have for so long except during those precious days when Jacob Asher’s arms were wrapped around me and I thought I’d found a gem. A man I could accept for who he was despite his flaws and who I hoped could accept me despite mine. But I was wrong.
It’s been two months since my mother’s confession. Two months and three weeks since the confrontation with Oxley at Cartier’s. Three months since I last spoke to Jacob. Five months since I found the letter from my uncle to my father.
Two weeks ago, Cartier announced the sale of the Hope Diamond to Evalyn Walsh McLean for $40,000 in cash, the return of an emerald and pearl pendant the McLeans had previously purchased from him, and $114,000 payable in three annual installments. It came to a total value of $180,000. Well below what he’d told me he expected to get for the stone.
Yesterday, Evalyn wore her brand-new diamond for the first time in public at a gala in Washington, D.C. I attended that party as a guest of Aunt Carrie and wrote about it for the World.
I left the capital this morning by train and returned home late this afternoon. I unpacked my gown and hung it up in the closet. Calling downstairs, I ordered some food. I poured myself a glass of wine, and while I waited for the meal to arrive, I reread the notes I’d taken before I left. I’m currently working on an exposé about a fake Rembrandt painting recently discovered at the Metropolitan Museum. While I have a lot of source material, I thought it would help for me to obtain some background on the painter’s life. That was when I remembered seeing a biography of the artist in my father’s library.
Out of all the rooms in the apartment, the library is the one that most brings my father back to life, along with my grief. Usually, I simply go in and out, careful not to linger. But earlier tonight, I took the biography off the shelf and sat down in my father’s big armchair to read.
From where the chair was positioned, I could see around the side of his desk and noticed a pile of books there. Getting up, I inspected them. They were the books that had led to my discovery of my father’s other life, that had led to all of what had happened. I’d never replaced them on the shelf.
It was time.
My father had organized them chronologically, but I’d gotten them out of sequence. I decided to put them back the way he had wanted them, for no other reason but to honor his love of order. And that meant going through all the books, one at a time, to get their publication dates from the copyright pages.
I picked up the last book. The letter from my uncle had been in the second-to-last one. I didn’t have that anymore. I’d done as Stephen had asked and given it to him for safekeeping in the law firm’s vault. Now I was glad. As much as the letter might serve as proof of Oxley’s crimes, it might also implicate my mother.
I shivered as I reached up to place the last book on the shelf with the others, but it slipped out of my hand and fell to the floor. As it did, an envelope fell out, fluttered down, and landed a few feet away from the ladder.
I descended and picked up the envelope.
It was addressed to me, with Vera written in my father’s elegant script in the dark green ink he always used.
With a shaking hand, I took it to his desk. And using his jade letter opener, I slit the paper.
Dear Vera…
I put the paper down. The words swam before my eyes. I needed a moment and took a deep breath. Then I looked down again. All this time, it had been here and I’d never known.
Dear Vera,
If you have found this, then I am going to assume you found the other letter. I’ve tried in my way in my life to share who I am with you in all the ways that would matter. But I never told you, face-to-face, the truth of who I am, and that was a mistake. I should have told you so that I could talk to you about love. I have loved so many people in my life in so many ways. I don’t want you to think that I didn’t love your mother. In my fashion, I did. She has been a fine and honorable wife to me. And a wonderful mother to both you girls. We all have shortcomings, darling Vera. We can only be who we are. That’s the hardest lesson I’ve learned. I could only be who I was, but in doing so, I’ve caused much pain, and for that I have regrets. But I know I’ve also given pleasure and joy and to you and your sister, nothing but pure, deep, and abiding love.
I am not a philosopher. Not a brave man who challenged the system or tried to make a difference. But you are someone who can do that. I know how much pain you have suffered trying to make a difference. I know you focus too often on when you’ve failed instead of when you’ve succeeded. And you have succeeded so often. And I’ve been so proud of you—not for the success or the failure but for the effort. Don’t stop trying, my dearest daughter. Keep fighting for everyone who can’t bring their own story to the people, for everyone who doesn’t have the words to move people and change the world the way you can.
But don’t, in the process of saving the world, forget to save yourself. I have watched you, your whole adult life, treat yourself with less insight and thought than the people you write about. Please turn your keen eye on yourself. Don’t shy away from love because you are looking for an ideal. There is no one capable of satisfying you if you look for perfection. We all have our faults. Even you. I’m smiling as I write this, thinking of you reading it and getting to this sentence and wanting to argue with me. You would tell me that I never disappointed you, that I lived up to the ideals you hold so dear. But that’s not true. I lied, to myself and your mother. I thought I could have it all and not hurt anyone. But I hurt all of you with my selfishness. I tell you this now so that I can leave you with one lesson, if I may.
Living alone with your ideals is noble. But it is also lonely. I want you to open yourself up to the idea that you might find someone one day whose strengths outweigh their weaknesses. Whose love for you overwhelms your fears. Don’t give up hope that there is happiness waiting for you. I am not going to give up my own hope that you will go forth and find that happiness and that when you do, you will embrace it for all its potential and possibility. Try, darling Vera. Just try, for me.
Your loving father
I held the letter in my hand and thought about everything that had happened since Charlotte Danzinger’s death, my uncle’s, my father’s, and Mr. Oxley’s. I thought about Mr. Cartier’s exaggerations. About Jacob’s larceny and my mother’s crime.
There is fate, and there is choice. There is chance, and there is determination. We can’t prove the absence of something. Does bad luck exist? Or good luck? Was dear Mrs. Walsh right to want to trick her own daughter to ensure she would never touch the actual Hope but would wear a glass reproduction of an object that had such a storied history behind it?
I will never know if luck is real or not, but I have learned that hope is. And that in order to have any kind of life worth living, hope is the thing that you must hold on to for dear life. Hope that you’ll do the right thing and take care of the people you love well enough that they will know it and will love you back.
I had that for a minute with Jacob. I had felt that soaring hope that we might fulfill each other.
I didn’t finish putting the books away. I didn’t check in the mirror or fix my hair. I threw on my coat and, still clutching the letter, let myself out of the apartment. Snow had started to fall. I didn’t know where to go or what to do. I just knew I had to get out of the apartment to think. I started to walk.
Now, standing here in the cold, staring at the fountain in front of the Plaza Hotel, I’m trying to pretend that I’m not really crying. That what appear to be tears are snowflakes melting on my cheeks.
I know what I want to do, but should I? Dare I?
I see a carriage pull up across the street in front of the Plaza and start for it, but a couple exiting the hotel reach it before I do, and they get in without so much as a glance my way.
Another carriage pulls up. I climb in and give the driver the address.
We drive down Fifth Avenue past Cartier’s and continue on until we reach Greenwich Village and pull up on the west side of the park.
Upstairs, I ring the doorbell. For a moment, there is no noise inside. What if he isn’t home? Will I find the courage to do this again? Ever? But after a moment, I hear footsteps, and then the door opens.
Jacob looks at me, at my disheveled outfit and my hatless head and my hands, the right one still clutching the letter, and he leads me inside.
“Are you all right?” he asks without any preamble at all. Without any surprise that I am here. Almost as if he has been waiting for me.
“You once told me how there is no such thing as a totally flawless gemstone,” I say, not offering any explanation, just launching into what I want to tell him.
“That’s true.”
“And that even if it takes the highest magnifier to see it, there is always an occlusion or fissure or starburst or something inside that makes a stone slightly imperfect. But that doesn’t mean it has no value.”
“Yes.” He nods, and I wonder if he understands what I’m not saying as much as what I am.
“I’m sorry that I didn’t trust you enough to tell you who I was,” I say, and take a step forward as he takes one, too. We don’t quite meet in the middle.
“Considering everything, I understand,” he says.
“Mr. Cartier told me you were going to Paris,” I say.
“I made it all the way to the ship, but I turned around.”
“Why?”
“It was too great a distance to put between us. And I was praying—” He breaks off.
“That we could find a way back to each other?” I ask.
“Yes. Do you think we can?” Jacob asks.
“I hope so…”
He reaches out to pull me the last few inches toward him, but as luck would have it, I have already stepped into the warm, welcoming circle of his arms. And there I stay.